Speakers Tour Spring 2019

Speakers Tour Spring 2019

by Elisabeth Zander

The NARGS traveling speaker for spring 2019 is Ger van den Beuken, from Horst, the Netherlands. He will be speaking at the following chapters: Berkshire (March 30), Manhattan (April 1), Great Lakes (April 6), Ontario (April 7), Northwestern (April 11), Columbia-Willamette (April 16), and Siskiyou (April 18). Ger will also be speaking at the Vancouver Island Rock and Alpine Garden Society (Victoria) (April 10) and the Alpine Garden Club of British Columbia (Vancouver) (April 11).

Ger van den Beuken

Ger runs a small nursery, specializing rare alpines in the Netherlands. His interest in alpines started about 35 years ago, during his first treks in the mountains. He particularly focused on the high alpine vegetation. He was getting fascinated by the beauty of all those wonderful genera like Saxifraga, Androsace, Dionysia and Daphne.

His first impulse and challenge was to start growing the most extremely cushion plants. But as he found out, it was not always easy to realize in his low land conditions in the Netherlands. Both his wife Mariet and he have traveled extensively with trips to many European countries and different parts of the European Alps, Sierra Nevada, Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Central and N. Chile, USA, China, New Zealand and Turkey. During the last 9 years he organized several expeditions to Patagonia. And as a result, got more and more interested in the fascinating vegetation of Argentina and Chile.

As a lecturer he was featured on speakers tours in the US with NARGS and in Scotland with the SRGC, and in New Zealand with NZAGS. There were as well, many other lectures in the US, England, Germany, Scotland, Czech Republic, Belgium as well as for his own Dutch Society. Topics included the different cultivation aspects of alpines or presenting travel reports of his expeditions.

He is current president of the Dutch alpine garden Society (NRV) as well as having served before. Additionally he is the vice-president of the Saxifraga Society in England for about 10 years. As time permits in his nursery, he spends as much time as possible in the winter writing articles for the different societies all to the baroque music of his favorite Johann Sebastian Bach.